


At Once

by JenTheSweetie



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, M/M, spoilers for episode 67: [Best of?]
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 06:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3885991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenTheSweetie/pseuds/JenTheSweetie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The most important thing he'd learned was that there wasn't anything that was unexplainable, there were only things he hadn't yet figured out how to explain.  Time could make normal moments out of extraordinary ones.  Time was weird that way.</i>
</p>
<p><i>Time was weird in a </i>lot<i> of ways.</i></p>
<p>Carlos figures a few things out after [Best of?].</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Once

**Author's Note:**

> _The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.  
>  \- Albert Einstein_

Carlos turned off the radio.

It was dusk in the otherworld desert, and outside the tent, the fires of the great army crackled, and the soldiers talked and cooked dinners and shared drinks, and somewhere in the camp, Cecil was showing Doug how to make invisible pie on a flat stone slab held over fiery red coals. But inside the tent that had been Carlos's home for months, all was quiet.

Carlos felt a bit like the world had tilted on its axis. This was, of course, a regular occurrence in Night Vale - it was located on several different tectonic plates, after all - but this was an _internal_ tilting, a tilting of the kind that he hadn't felt since his first few months in the small desert down, when the metaphorical ground was constantly shifting under his feet and his mind was still trying to reject anything that couldn't be explained by the science he already knew. 

He'd learned a lot in three years. The most important thing he'd learned was that there wasn't anything that was unexplainable, there were only things he hadn't yet figured out how to explain. Time could make normal moments out of extraordinary ones. Time was weird that way.

Time was weird in a _lot_ of ways. 

Carlos shakily set down his pen, which he'd been gripping in his clenched fist since the first few minutes of Leonard's broadcast. "Don't you want to listen to the show?" Carlos had said after Cecil had announced earlier that evening that he had plans to help Doug with dinner.

"Nah," Cecil had said casually. "It's kind of weird to think that the Voice of Night Vale could be anybody but me."

Carlos had shrugged and watched him go, then turned on the radio himself to listen in while he organized his notes on the day's scientific findings. He wished he'd asked Cecil to stay. He was glad Cecil hadn't wanted to.

Carlos took a deep, shuddering breath. How much did Cecil know? How much did he suspect? Carlos had long realized that there were a few things that were very, very wrong with Night Vale, and several things that were impossible, but he'd always felt like, with enough science and time, he'd be able to figure them all out. Carlos couldn't think of what science could explain _this_ , but apparently - he laughed shakily - finding enough _time_ wasn't going to be an issue.

He tried not to think about Guglielmo Marconi. He knew Cecil'd had relationships before him, just like he'd had relationships before Cecil. There was no reason to be jealous that Cecil had _slept_ with Guglielmo Marconi. There was maybe a reason to be jealous that Cecil had slept with _Guglielmo Marconi_. Carlos himself hadn't slept with _anybody_ who had invented anything as fascinating as radio; there was that one guy in grad school who'd invented canine nail polish, but that had just been a flash in the pan during the Dogs in Drag era, and at any rate he'd been _terrible_ in bed - but that wasn't the point. The point was that one of Cecil's exes had not only invented the radio, but that he'd been dead for 50 years before Carlos was _born_. 

Or maybe the point was that the man who had shown up in the middle of the desert a day earlier with a wheelie suitcase and a blinding grin, the man who had thrown himself into Carlos's arms so hard that they'd sprawled onto the ground and their first kiss in almost a year had taken place covered in dust and with a rock poking Carlos in the tailbone, the man who had looked around Carlos's tiny tent in the middle of camp and wiped his eyes and said he was just _so glad to be together, in this place where their space and time matched_ \- the point was that Carlos had absolutely no idea who he was. 

He thought of all the times Cecil had talked about the past, on the air and off: his mother, his trip to Europe, his admittedly bizarre childhood radio internship - they had all seemed, if not normal, at least as normal as the Glow Cloud, and the House That Doesn't Exist, and the Erikas, and a whole host of other things that Carlos had learned to just take for what they were, which was Real, Probably. 

Now he couldn't help but think: how much of what he knew about Cecil was even Real, Probably? How much was creatively edited, erased around the edges, made safe for Carlos's consumption, hideously untrue? Carlos was a scientist, and scientists always wanted to know the truth. No matter how frightening it was, or hard to believe, or damaging to a relationship. Carlos loved Cecil, and nothing - not alternate universes, or fissures in space-time, or unusually long lifespans, or even flings with handsome 19th century scientists - could change that.

_Right?_

The flap of the tent opened, and in swept the smell of cooked meat and the laughter of the army and Cecil, flushed and grinning broadly.

"You'd better come get some pie before it's all gone," he said, coming up to run a hand through Carlos's hair, which he'd pronounced "more perfect than ever, if a bit shaggy" when he'd arrived the day before. "Doug's had two slices already, he had never even _heard_ of invisible pie, can you believe - sweetheart? Is something wrong?" He pulled his hand back like Carlos had slapped it away, and Carlos realized that he'd thrown himself back against the canvas of the tent, yanked himself out of the space he should have been sharing with Cecil.

"Carlos?" Cecil said, his face crumpling in confusion and concern. "Are you okay?"

_I don't know_ , Carlos thought, but didn't say, because if a scientist didn't know something, he made it his goal to figure it out. A scientist always looks for the truth, even if the truth is that the most important person in his life is not exactly who he thought he was. 

He tried to figure out what Cecil could say to make him feel better. Would he prefer to hear that Cecil didn't actually _know_ that he - that Night Vale - that whatever had happened, had happened? Or would he prefer to hear that he'd been protected, lied to, that he'd been lulled to complacency by Cecil's mouth and hands and bright eyes and stopped doing the thing that he was, as a scientist, always supposed to be doing: searching for answers, for the truth, for an _explanation_ , an explanation that he wasn't sure could ever really make sense no matter how long he had to study it?

If a thing had always been true, was it a _problem_ just because Carlos was only finding out about it now? Gravity had existed before Carlos had understood it. So had evolution, and the speed of light, and the House That Doesn't Exist. So had Cecil. And Cecil - well, Cecil was as constant and horrifying and unexplainable as any scientific phenomenon Carlos had ever heard of. 

_Right._

"I'm fine," Carlos said, reaching out and cupping Cecil's cheek, and Cecil smiled. 

"Good," Cecil said. "Do you want some pie?"

"Yes," Carlos said. "I do." And he took Cecil by the hand and led him out into the camp, walking among the soldiers who had become his friends, to eat pie under the starless void.


End file.
